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US President Donald Trump will impose tariffs on Saturday of 25% on Mexico, 25% on Canada and 10% on China on 1 February, says the White House.

But Trump said on Friday that Canadian oil would be hit with lower tariffs of 10%, which could take effect later, on 18 February.

The president also said he planned to impose tariffs on the European Union in the future, saying the bloc had not treated the US well.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the Canada and Mexico duties were in response to “the illegal fentanyl that they have sourced and allowed to distribute into our country, which has killed 10s of millions of Americans”.

Trump has also repeatedly said the move was to address the large amounts of undocumented migrants that have come across US borders as well as trade deficits with its neighbours.

Ms Leavitt told a news briefing at the White House on Friday: “These are promises made and promises kept by the President.”

During the election campaign, Trump threatened to hit Chinese-made products with tariffs of up to 60%, but held off on any immediate action on his first day back in the White House, instead ordering his administration to study the issue.

US goods imports from China have flattened since 2018, a statistic that economists have attributed in part to a series of escalating tariffs that Trump imposed during his first term.

Earlier this month, a top Chinese official warned against protectionism as Trump’s return to the presidency renews the threat of a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies – but did not mention the US by name.

Addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ding Xuexiang, Vice Premier of China, said his country was looking for a “win-win” solution to trade tensions and wanted to expand its imports.

China, Canada and Mexico are the top US trading partners, accounting for 40% of the goods imported into the US last year, and fears are rising that the new steep levies could kick off a major trade war as well as push up prices in the US.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday: “It’s not what we want, but if he moves forward, we will also act.”

Canada and Mexico have already said that they would respond to US tariffs with measures of their own, while also seeking to assure Washington that they were taking action to address concerns about their US borders.

The BBC has reached out to the Chinese embassy in the US for comment.

If US imports of oil from Canada and Mexico are hit with levies it risks undermining Trump’s promise to bring down the cost of living.

Tariffs are an import tax on goods that are produced abroad.

In theory, taxing items coming into a country means people are less likely to buy them as they become more expensive.

The intention is that they buy cheaper local products instead – boosting a country’s economy.

But the cost of tariffs on imported energy could be passed on to businesses and consumers, which may increase the prices of everything from petrol to groceries.

On Friday, Trump agreed tariff costs are sometimes passed along to consumers and that his plans may cause disruption in the short-term.

Around 40% of the crude that runs through US oil refineries is imported, and the vast majority of it comes from Canada.

Canada will react forcefully and immediately if Donald Trump imposes tariffs, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday.

The US president has said he could levy a 25% tariff on Canadian imports as soon as Saturday.

“It’s not what we want, but if he moves forward, we will also act,” Trudeau said.

Tariffs are a central part of Trump’s economic vision. He sees them as a way of growing the US economy, protecting jobs and raising tax revenue.

Economists suggest that such a move could have devastating immediate impacts on Canada’s economy – while also leading to higher prices for Americans.

“I won’t sugarcoat it – our nation could be facing difficult times in the coming days and weeks,” Trudeau said in his televised address to Canadians.

Canada is trying to avoid a trade war altogether. It has pledged more than C$1bn ($690m; £560m) to boost security at its shared border with the US – a key point of contention for Trump, who appears to be using tariffs as a negotiating tactic.

Trudeau said all options were still on the table – here are four of them, and their possible impacts.

Canada has already fought one tariff “war” with Trump.

During his first term, the US president slapped 10% tariffs on Canadian aluminium products and 25% tariffs on Canadian steel, citing national security concerns.

Ottawa retaliated by imposing tariffs on select goods, which were chosen to send a political message to Trump and his allies.

It put levies on Florida orange juice, and whiskey and bourbon from Tennessee and Kentucky – the latter being the home of then-Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.

Both countries ended up agreeing to lift the tariffs a year later.

Senior Canadian officials recently told local media that if Trump imposed tariffs again, the immediate response would likely be targeted.

According to US government data, 17% of US exports go to Canada. More than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the US.

Canada stands to suffer a larger economic blow in any trade war with the US and this stark imbalance is why targeted tariffs are often the first and safest approach, said Peter Clark, a lawyer who previously worked on trade policy issues in Canada’s federal finance department.

By targeting select goods, Canada can hit the US without widely punishing its own citizens, as tariffs can immediately raise prices for consumers at home.

This approach is also why officials are pushing a “Buy Canadian” campaign as a way to lessen the impact of a potential retaliation.

But pundits argue that Trump is less politically vulnerable this time, given that he cannot run for a third term in the White House.

“You won’t have the same impact as last time,” said Julian Karaguesian, an economics lecturer at McGill University in Montreal and a former finance counsellor at the Canadian embassy in Washington DC.

Another move Canada made in its first tariff war with its neighbour was to apply dollar-for-dollar tariffs.

It slapped identical tariffs on US aluminium and steel, and ensured the total dollar value of the American goods it taxed equalled the US tariffs on Canadian exports. That came up to around C$16.6bn at the time.

This time, the possible use of dollar-for-dollar tariffs could be much larger, with Canada reportedly preparing a first round on about $37bn of goods, according to official sources quoted in Canadian media.

That could be expanded to another C$110bn worth of goods.

The challenge is that Canada still does not know just how sweeping Trump’s tariffs would be. The more sweeping they are, the more goods Canada would have to tax in response.

Not all of Canada is on board with dollar-for-dollar tariffs. Scott Moe, leader of the mineral-rich province of Saskatchewan, has said that broad levies on US goods would “rip this country apart”.

Mr Karaguesian said the promised US tariffs on Canadian goods could plunge the country into a recession. If Canada responded with dollar-for-dollar tariffs, it could lead to inflation.

This would result in “stagflation,” he said, referring to a combination of high unemployment and rising prices.

Mr Clark said that whatever decision Canada took, politics would likely be top of mind. Polls suggest a majority of Canadians support retaliation, and that many Canadian business leaders want targeted, dollar-for-dollar tariffs.

Canadian politicians might be pushed to respond more forcefully if it means a boost in approval, Mr Clark said. “We’re talking about political decisions, which are not always rational.”

One of the most valuable assets in Canada’s arsenal is energy.

North-eastern US states like Vermont, New York and Maine significantly rely on electricity sold to them by neighbouring Canadian provinces. British Columbia and Manitoba also supply energy to western and Midwestern regions of the US.

About 30 states receive some of their electricity from Canada, according to Canadian government data.

Canada is also the top supplier of crude oil to the US, making up 60% of total oil imports, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

Doug Ford, Ontario’s premier, has suggested that Canada cut off Americans’ supply to pinch Americans at the petrol pump.

Trump suggested on Thursday that oil and gas could be exempt from US tariffs but Canada still has the option of energy restrictions or taxes to inflict pain.

“The only thing that would really sting in the immediate to short-term is if energy prices went up, because Trump himself campaigned on bringing energy prices down very quickly,” said Mr Karaguesian.

But the move would be contentious, especially with the oil-rich province of Alberta – which has refused to sign off on taxing its oil and gas exports, arguing that doing so would disproportionately hurt its economy.

Other ideas have been floated.

Ford said that Ontario could pull American-made alcohol off shop shelves in the province, signalling a different approach in which different provincial premiers could define their own responses.

Another option is not retaliating – at least for now. For weeks, Canadian officials have been meeting their American counterparts in Washington DC in a bid to stave off any American tariffs in the first place.

On Wednesday, foreign minister Melanie Joly met Secretary of State Marco Rubio to deliver a message that tariffs would be bad for both countries, and that Ottawa was addressing US concerns about border security and fentanyl trafficking.

“We need to continue to engage,” she told reporters.

Canada has also signalled that it could bring in a relief programme for businesses harmed by the possible tariffs, similar to those introduced during the Covid pandemic.

Some argue, given the economic costs of retaliation, that Canada should instead focus on diversifying its trade relationships and increasing domestic production.

“We’re a natural resource superpower,” Mr Karaguesia said, adding that the country could use the tariffs as a push to harness that potential and sell its products elsewhere.

The Russians came for Tetiana and Oleh Plachkov while they were sleeping, bursting into their home late at night.

It was 25 September 2023 in Melitopol, south-eastern Ukraine, where the couple had grown up, fallen in love and married. Now their city was occupied by Russian forces.

The men were armed and dressed in black. As some began searching the house, seizing devices and documents, others led Tetiana and Oleh away in handcuffs.

The couple then vanished without trace.

Ukraine has listed more than 61,000 people as missing since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, both soldiers and civilians.

When troops go missing in action there is a chance they might eventually be included in a prisoner-of-war exchange. But civilians are returned very rarely: the Russians don’t usually admit to holding them.

Four months after she was detained, Tetiana was abandoned at a hospital in Melitopol in a coma. She had no clothes or medical papers and the soldiers who brought her left no explanation. She died without ever regaining consciousness.

Oleh has never been found.

“It’s so hard for me to think about what they did to her, and why. My mum was 51. She loved life. She was such a radiant person, then everything was cut short,” the couple’s only daughter, Lyudmila, cries quietly.

“If, God forbid, something has happened to my father it will kill me.”

Lyudmila’s phone is full of happy memories of her parents. She showed them to me on a recent visit to Ukraine, where she’d travelled to wind up the family restaurant business and give a DNA sample that might identify her father if a body is ever found.

It’s not something Lyudmila wants to contemplate.

The family were extremely close. Every day under Russian occupation, her parents would send reassuring video messages. “Morning, daughter! Just checking in,” Tetiana announces in one video, then swings the camera round to her husband who waves and grins in his dressing gown.

There are pictures from life before the war, too: laughing on a beach, dancing at a disco. The couple are full of energy and life.

When Russian tanks rolled into their city in early 2022, the Plachkovs decided to stay. The entire country was under attack in an invasion that Vladimir Putin had threatened, but most could not imagine until the first explosions.

In those first weeks, Lyudmila joined the crowds waving blue and yellow Ukrainian flags and shouting at the soldiers to leave. Then the round-up began.

In Putin’s Russia, fear is a way of rule: dissent is crushed and critics imprisoned. The aim is to punish the few and scare the rest into compliance.

Now the same principle was being imported to the swathes of southern and eastern Ukraine illegally claimed by Russia, with soldiers patrolling the streets.

There, those considered loyal to Kyiv were seen as traitors.

After a few months in that climate, Lyudmila fled abroad as a refugee. But her mother didn’t want to leave her city, her own parents or the business she and Oleh had built up. She also had faith in the Ukrainian military.

In late 2023, all the talk was of a counteroffensive in the southeast to take territory back from Russia and Tetiana believed Melitopol would be liberated.

“She was a strong optimist,” Lyudmila smiles. “I’d say, ‘mum, maybe you should leave.’ And she’d say, ‘Just a little more time. Our guys will push harder.’”

Earlier that year, Tetiana’s name had appeared online on a pro-Russian forum. It identified her as a ‘waiter’, a slur for those seen to be ‘waiting’ for liberation. Melitopol was full of informers.

“She definitely donated money and helped [Ukraine] however she could,” her daughter tells me. “Some people die on the battlefield and others die in occupation, helping Ukraine in other ways. To me, she’s a warrior. She knew the risks. But she had to help.”

By then, Ukrainians in occupied areas were being forced to take Russian passports. Russian citizens were brought in to staff schools, as well as police and prosecutors.

Eventually Tetiana and Oleh agreed to leave Melitopol if the Ukrainian army hadn’t pushed through by November. But in September, they were arrested.

Lyudmila was frantic. Unable to return to an occupied town, she wrote to every official body she could find, demanding answers as her grandmother began searching local police stations and prisons.

Then, in February 2024, came a call: Tetiana was critically ill, and Lyudmila’s gran could visit her in hospital – once she’d been questioned by the FSB security service. That’s how the family learned Tetiana was being investigated for espionage.

But by that point she was unconscious. A nurse later told Lyudmila her mother had arrived in hospital with severe bedsores, suggesting she had been immobile for some time. So where had she been and what happened to her?

Through sheer persistence, Lyudmila has gathered a thick file of documents on her parents’ disappearance but she says that none of the printed words make sense. They claim Tetiana had been passing information about Russian military personnel to Ukrainian intelligence, but the criminal case was only opened after she was brought to hospital.

Before that, the papers record that “unknown persons in military uniform” had taken her and Oleh in an “unknown direction” in September 2023.

Their whereabouts from then on is officially a mystery. But in Russia it is the FSB that handles espionage cases, including detention and interrogation, and it was Russian FSB officers who searched Tetiana and Oleh’s home.

“I’d like to believe her health deteriorated because of the poor conditions and lack of proper care, but deep down I understand that they tortured her,” Lyudmila believes.

Her view is formed from first-hand accounts of brutality in occupied territory, including from a restaurant singer charged in the same espionage case as Tetiana.

“They were probably extracting information,” Lyudmila says. “I know they like to use electric shock.”

The autopsy and a hospital report she obtained show that Tetiana died of pneumonia after a prolonged time on a ventilator. But why she was intubated initially isn’t recorded. Neither is what happened to Lyudmila’s father, Oleh.

“He is not on the lists of those detained, there is no criminal case against him,” a letter from the Russian Interior Ministry reads. Police have opened a criminal case for abduction but there are no suspects and no clues.

Lyudmila’s suffering is shared by many thousands of Ukrainian families. At a hotline in Kyiv run by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), most of the calls are from people searching for relatives lost in this war.

The phone operators gather detailed information, often in long and emotional calls, which they then send to a tracing database in Geneva.

Lyudmila has logged her own details here and elsewhere, but so far there have been no answers.

“There are always limits to what we’re able to do, and we have to be very realistic with families to manage their expectations. There’s a lot of pain and frustration,” ICRC spokesman Patrick Griffiths explains.

He is also countering criticism in Ukraine that the organisation doesn’t push Russia hard enough.

International humanitarian law obliges all states to report every detainee during an armed conflict, and provide access, but Russia simply ignores that. It’s partly because it sees all civilians in occupied areas as Russian and nobody else’s business. It’s also a display of contempt for the rest of the world’s rules.

The ICRC does have staff in Moscow and parts of occupied Ukraine, but whilst handing out aid is allowed, occasionally, touring Melitopol to search for secret prisons is not.

“There are a lot of families who… may never receive the answer they’re looking for,” Mr Griffiths cautions, adding that the ICRC can’t “force its way in” anywhere. “But the process of dialogue with the authorities, trying to improve our access, never stops.”

Ukraine’s own national search squad has even less access. The Office for Missing Persons in Special Circumstances amounts to just three police officers, based at the end of an Interior Ministry corridor in Kyiv. But their powerful facial recognition software can scan websites and media, hunting for an ever-growing list of the missing.

Russian bloggers sometimes post videos of detainees, or the dead. But a search for Lyudmila’s father draws a blank.

“Either he’s being held hostage and can’t contact relatives,” commissioner Artur Dobroserdov explains before voicing the other alternative. “Sometimes, the bodies of civilians are returned to us along with our deceased soldiers. They are mostly in a very poor condition, so visual recognition is impossible.”

That’s why Lyudmila gave a DNA sample.

In occupied areas, the abductions have slowed as the full-scale war heads towards its fourth year, but they haven’t stopped.

The interior ministry recorded more than 1,000 new missing people last month but these days many of that number will be soldiers.

On the whole, Russia’s methods seem brutally effective: the staunchest supporters of Kyiv have either left occupied land, or keep their heads down and mouths shut. In some cases, Ukrainians who once fled such towns are now returning to live under Russian rule. For some, it’s better than being a refugee.

Perhaps that’s why I’ve heard some Ukrainians wonder out loud lately whether such land is still worth fighting for.

With the frontline barely shifting, certainly not in Kyiv’s favour, and soldiers dying each day, the country is starting to ask some very tough questions: about this war, the endgame and the immense costs.

In her own personal battle, Lyudmila still manages to find some cause for hope. Because sometimes the missing do resurface.

In 2023, Leonid Popov was detained in Melitopol, just like Lyudmila’s parents

He’d taken a photograph of Russian military hardware, was chased down the street by soldiers then disappeared.

Three months later his father got a call: Leonid had been left at a city hospital, exhausted and severely dehydrated.

The photographs his mother Anna has shared from that day are shocking: the young man’s ribs are clearly visible beneath his skin.

“He told me that he’d been in awful conditions,” Anna remembers talking to Leonid that day.

“He said, ‘mum, in a word, I was in hell.’”

Over the months, Leonid had been held and interrogated in multiple locations. “They were given plastic plates of buckwheat and a glass of water for about 20 people. When they said they were hungry, they were told to shut up or they’d be shot.”

His parents began making plans to get him out of Melitopol to safety. But as soon as he was discharged, he was detained immediately and disappeared all over again.

Like Lyudmila’s father, Leonid was officially listed as missing even though he’d been taken away by soldiers.

It was another whole year before his parents were told he was in pre-trial detention in Donetsk, another occupied city, and charged with espionage. Initially overjoyed to find him, they now worry about his health: Leonid has paranoid schizophrenia, managed with medication.

“They do not understand that for a person with such a diagnosis, it’s already deadly just to be in prison without his pills,” Anna worries. She has begun writing to Russian officials, pleading for Leonid to be included on a prisoner exchange list, on humanitarian grounds.

“No one could have foreseen this nightmare,” says Lyudmila. “Even now, as I talk about it, I can’t believe it’s real.”

She hasn’t chosen a photo for her mother’s grave, as if she’s stalling her grieving until she can find her father. But she’s run out of places to turn.

And now Donald Trump is back in the White House, with talk of negotiations to end the war. That won’t be quick or easy, if it happens at all, but it could force Ukraine to relinquish occupied areas like Melitopol to Russia.

“Maybe they’ll release the civilians if they think they’ve won?” Lyudmila tries to look on the bright side. “Or maybe it will get worse: a dead end.”

“Either way, accepting that this land is no longer Ukraine would be very hard.”

It is the land her parents defended and where they were happy and where, even now, Lyudmila believes Oleh could be held in a cold basement or a prison cell, still waiting to be found.

“I couldn’t save my mum, even though I tried so hard,” she says. “Now I need to save my dad.”

Production by Paul Pradier, Xavier Vanpevenaege and Svitlana Libet

Top picture credit: BBC

Byline image picture credit: Jonathan Ford

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For Christmas I received an interesting gift from a friend – my very own “best-selling” book.

“Tech-Splaining for Dummies” (great title) bears my name and my photo on its cover, and it has glowing reviews.

Yet it was entirely written by AI, with a few simple prompts about me supplied by my friend Janet.

It’s an interesting read, and very funny in parts. But it also meanders quite a lot, and is somewhere between a self-help book and a stream of anecdotes.

It mimics my chatty style of writing, but it’s also a bit repetitive, and very verbose. It may have gone beyond Janet’s prompts in collating data about me.

Several sentences begin “as a leading technology journalist…” – cringe – which could have been scraped from an online bio.

There’s also a mysterious, repeated hallucination in the form of my cat (I have no pets). And there’s a metaphor on almost every page – some more random than others.

There are dozens of companies online offering AI-book writing services. My book was from BookByAnyone.

When I contacted the chief executive Adir Mashiach, based in Israel, he told me he had sold around 150,000 personalised books, mainly in the US, since pivoting from compiling AI-generated travel guides in June 2024.

A paperback copy of your own 240-page long best-seller costs £26. The firm uses its own AI tools to generate them, based on an open source large language model.

I’m not asking you to buy my book. Actually you can’t – only Janet, who created it, can order any further copies.

There is currently no barrier to anyone creating one in anybody’s name, including celebrities – although Mr Mashiach says there are guardrails around abusive content. Each book contains a printed disclaimer stating that it is fictional, created by AI, and designed “solely to bring humour and joy”.

Legally, the copyright belongs to the firm, but Mr Mashiach stresses that the product is intended as a “personalised gag gift”, and the books do not get sold further.

He hopes to broaden his range, generating different genres such as sci-fi, and perhaps offering an autobiography service. It’s designed to be a light-hearted form of consumer AI – selling AI-generated goods to human customers.

It’s also a bit terrifying if, like me, you write for a living. Not least because it probably took less than a minute to generate, and it does, certainly in some parts, sound just like me.

Musicians, authors, artists and actors worldwide have expressed alarm about their work being used to train generative AI tools that then churn out similar content based upon it.

“We should be clear, when we are talking about data here, we actually mean human creators’ life works,” says Ed Newton Rex, founder of Fairly Trained, which campaigns for AI firms to respect creators’ rights.

“This is books, this is articles, this is photos. It’s works of art. It’s records… The whole point of AI training is to learn how to do something and then do more like that.”

In 2023 a song featuring AI-generated voices of Canadian singers Drake and The Weeknd went viral on social media before being pulled from streaming platforms because it was not their work and they had not consented to it. It didn’t stop the track’s creator trying to nominate it for a Grammy award. And even though the artists were fake, it was still wildly popular.

“I do not think the use of generative AI for creative purposes should be banned, but I do think that generative AI for these purposes that is trained on people’s work without permission should be banned,” Mr Newton Rex adds. “AI can be very powerful but let’s build it ethically and fairly.”

In the UK some organisations – including the BBC – have chosen to block AI developers from trawling their online content for training purposes. Others have decided to collaborate – the Financial Times has partnered with ChatGPT creator OpenAI for example.

The UK government is considering an overhaul of the law that would allow AI developers to use creators’ content on the internet to help develop their models, unless the rights holders opt out.

Ed Newton Rex describes this as “insanity”.

He points out that AI can make advances in areas like defence, healthcare and logistics without trawling the work of authors, journalists and artists.

“All of these things work without going and changing copyright law and ruining the livelihoods of the country’s creatives,” he argues.

Baroness Kidron, a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, is also strongly against removing copyright law for AI.

“Creative industries are wealth creators, 2.4 million jobs and a whole lot of joy,” says the Baroness, who is also an advisor to the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University.

“The government is undermining one of its best performing industries on the vague promise of growth.”

A government spokesperson said: “No move will be made until we are absolutely confident we have a practical plan that delivers each of our objectives: increased control for right holders to help them license their content, access to high-quality material to train leading AI models in the UK, and more transparency for right holders from AI developers.”

Under the UK government’s new AI plan, a national data library containing public data from a wide range of sources will also be made available to AI researchers.

In the US the future of federal rules to control AI is now up in the air following President Trump’s return to the presidency.

In 2023 Biden signed an executive order that aimed to boost the safety of AI with, among other things, firms in the sector required to share details of the workings of their systems with the US government before they are released.

But this has now been repealed by Trump. It remains to be seen what Trump will do instead, but he is said to want the AI sector to face less regulation.

This comes as a number of lawsuits against AI firms, and particularly against OpenAI, continue in the US. They have been taken out by everyone from the New York Times to authors, music labels, and even a comedian.

They claim that the AI firms broke the law when they took their content from the internet without their consent, and used it to train their systems.

The AI companies argue that their actions fall under “fair use” and are therefore exempt. There are a number of factors which can constitute fair use – it’s not a straight-forward definition. But the AI sector is under increasing scrutiny over how it gathers training data and whether it should be paying for it.

If this wasn’t all enough to ponder, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek has shaken the sector over the past week. It became the most downloaded free app on Apple’s US App Store.

DeepSeek claims that it developed its technology for a fraction of the price of the likes of OpenAI. Its success has raised security concerns in the US, and threatens American’s current dominance of the sector.

As for me and a career as an author, I think that at the moment, if I really want a “bestseller” I’ll still have to write it myself. If anything, Tech-Splaining for Dummies highlights the current weakness in generative AI tools for bigger projects. It is full of inaccuracies and hallucinations, and it can be quite difficult to read in parts because it’s so long-winded.

But given how quickly the tech is evolving, I’m not sure how long I can remain confident that my considerably slower human writing and editing skills, are better.

The body of a woman has been found near where two missing sisters were last seen in Aberdeen.

Henrietta and Eliza Huszti – both 32 and from a set of triplets – were last sighted near the River Dee on 7 January.

Police Scotland said the body had been recovered after being seen in the river, near Queen Elizabeth Bridge, at about 07:55.

Officers said that while the woman had not yet been formally identified, the family of Henrietta Huszti had been informed and that the search for her sister Eliza was continuing.

Police said inquiries were onging but that there were no apparent suspicious circumstances.

Supt David Howieson said: “Our thoughts are with the Huszti family today.

“We are keeping them fully updated following this recovery and the further search activity, which is ongoing.

“We know how much of an impact this has had in Aberdeen and much further afield.”

A police boat has been searching the river and coastguard teams were also at the scene.

The disappearance of the two sisters – originally from Hungary – sparked a major search operation earlier this month.

They were last seen in the early hours of 7 January, when they crossed the Victoria Bridge and turned right onto a footpath next to the river heading towards Aberdeen Boat Club.

The Victoria Bridge and Queen Elizabeth Bridge are about half a mile apart on the River Dee.

Earlier this week Police Scotland said searches of the river and the harbour area had ended.

But the force said inquiries would be ongoing and coastal areas north and south of the city would continue to be searched.

Detectives previously revealed the sisters visited the Victoria Bridge the day before they disappeared.

They also texted their landlady from the bridge area in the early hours of 7 January to say they would not return to their flat.

The sisters moved to Scotland about 10 years ago.

Officers had been treating it is a missing persons inquiry and not a criminal investigation.

The two missing sisters had not told relatives they planned to imminently move out of their rented Aberdeen flat.

They had been saving up to buy a property but their brother Jozsef told BBC News earlier this month it was “strange” the family did not know they had decided to end their tenancy.

It has been a humiliating week for nearly 300 Romanian mercenaries recruited to fight on the side of the army in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Their surrender following a rebel assault on the eastern city of Goma has also shattered the dreams of those who signed up for the job to earn big money.

The BBC has seen contracts that show that these hired soldiers were being paid around $5,000 (£4,000) a month, while regular military recruits get around $100, or sometimes go unpaid.

The Romanians were contracted to help the army fight the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels, who say they are fighting to protect the rights of DR Congo’s minority ethnic Tutsis.

When the offensive on Goma started on Sunday night, the Romanians were forced to take refuge at a UN peacekeeping base.

“The M23 rebels were supported by troops and state-of-the-art military equipment from Rwanda and managed to reach our positions around the city of Goma,” Constantin Timofti, described as a co-ordinator for the group, told Romanian TVR channel on Monday.

“The national army gave up fighting and we were forced to withdraw.”

Romania’s foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Țărnea told the BBC that “complex” negotiations followed, which saw the M23 hand over the Romanian fighters – whom he described as private employees of the DR Congo government on an army training mission – to Rwanda.

Goma sits right on the border with Rwanda – and the mercenaries were filmed by journalists as they crossed over, surrendering to body searches and other checks.

Before they crossed over, phone footage shows M23 commander Willy Ngoma berating one of the Romanians in French, telling him to sit on the ground, cross his legs and put his hands over his head.

He asked him about his military training – it was with the French Foreign Legion, the Romanian replied.

“They recruited you with a salary of $8,000 a month, you eat well,” Ngoma yelled, pointing out the disparity between that and a Congolese army recruit’s pay.

“We are fighting for our future. Do not come for adventure here,” he warned.

It is not clear where Ngoma got the $8,000 figure, but the contract shown to the BBC by a former Romanian mercenary in October detailed that “strictly confidential remuneration” for senior personnel started at $5,000 per month during active duty and $3,000 during periods of leave.

The agreement outlines an “indefinite period” of service, with contractors scheduled to take a one-month break after every three months of deployment.

I had met the ex-mercenary in Romania’s capital, Bucharest, where I had gone to investigate Asociatia RALF, which a group of UN experts say is a Romanian enterprise with “ex-Romanians from the French Foreign Legion”.

It is headed by Horațiu Potra, a Romanian who describes himself as a military instructor.

In June while in Goma, I had noticed such mercenaries at checkpoints and deployed around the city, working closely with army.

Over the last three years, others have reported seeing them driving Congolese troops in army vehicles.

“When they arrived, everyone referred to them as Russian,” Fiston Mahamba, co-founder of disinformation group Check Congo, told the BBC.

“I think this was linked to the Russian mercenary group, Wagner with presence in several African countries.”

In fact, Asociatia RALF may also work across Africa – its contract stipulated that it had various “operational locations”, including “Burkina Faso, DR Congo, Ivory Coast, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Guinea”.

The UN experts say that two private military companies were brought on board to bolster its forces in 2022, not long after the M23 had regrouped and begun capturing territory in North Kivu.

The province has been unstable for decades with numerous militias operating there making money from its minerals like gold and coltan – used to make batteries for electric vehicles and mobile phones.

The first firm that was signed up was Agemira RDC, headed by Olivier Bazin, a French-Congolese national. The experts say the company employed Bulgarian, Belarusian, Georgian, Algerian, French and Congolese nationals.

This outfit was tasked with refurbishing and increasing DR Congo’s military air assets, rehabilitating airports and ensuring the physical security of aircraft and other strategic locations.

A second contract was signed between Congo Protection, a Congolese company represented by Thierry Kongolo, and Asociatia RALF.

According to the UN experts, the contract specified that Asociatia RALF had expertise and extensive experience in the provision of security management services.

It would provide training and instruction to the Congolese troops on the ground by means of a contingent of 300 instructors, many of them Romanians.

When I spoke to Mr Potra in July about the extent of his group’s involvement on the ground and whether it had engaged in fighting, he said: “We have to protect ourselves. If M23 attacks us, they won’t simply say: ‘Oh, you’re just instructors – go home’.”

Mr Potra was hands-on during the DR Congo mission until a few months ago when he returned to Romania – and has since been embroiled in a controversy amid the annulled presidential election there.

He was dramatically arrested in December and has since denied providing security for the pro-Russian, far-right candidate Călin Georgescu. And since October, he has refused to return the BBC’s calls.

The ex-mercenary, who was in his late forties and spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity, said he had resigned because he was unhappy about how Asociatia RALF was operating.

He said the Romanians did much more on the ground in North Kivu province: “Only a very small number of us were actually trainers.

“We worked long shifts of up to 12 hours, guarding key positions outside Goma.”

He maintained the pay was not worth the risks the military contractors had to take.

“Missions were disorganised, working conditions poor. Romanians should stop going there because it’s dangerous.”

He also claimed that proper background checks had not been done, and some of the Romanian recruits had no military training – citing as an example that one of his former colleagues was a firefighter.

DR Congo’s government has not replied to a BBC request for comment on whether background checks were carried out, or about the pay disparity between the private contractors and Congolese troops.

The family of Vasile Badea, one of two Romanians who were killed last February when an army convoy was ambushed by the M23 fighters on its way to Sake, a frontline town near Goma, told the BBC he had been a police officer.

The 46-year-old had taken a sabbatical from the force and took up the role in DR Congo because of the lucrative salary offer.

The policeman was struggling to pay for an apartment he had just acquired and needed more money.

Many more Romanians were lured by the prospects of a well-paid job.

I met one man in Bucharest in October, who was back home looking for more recruits to go to Goma. He had a military background and had done Nato tours in Afghanistan with the Romanian army.

“We are very busy trying to find 800 people who need to be mentally prepared for the job and know how to fight,” the mercenary recruiter told the BBC.

He said he did not work for Asociatia RALF, but refused to say which outfit he was with.

“The recruits will be placed in positions corresponding to the level of their training, earning between $400-$550 per day,” he explained.

When asked about the recruitment process, he emphasised its confidentiality.

“Such jobs are not published anywhere,” he said, adding that networks like WhatsApp were preferred.

He showed me a WhatsApp group where more than 300 Romanians had signed up, many of whom were ex-military personnel.

In June last year, Rwanda’s government spokesperson Yolande Makolo hit out about the presence of mercenaries in eastern DR Congo, saying it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit the use of hired combatants.

In response, Congolese government spokesperson Patrick Muyaya dismissed what he called Rwanda’s perennial complaint.

“We have some instructors who come to train our military forces because we know we have this urgent situation,” he told the BBC.

But a Congolese soldier I met in June expressed his dismay over the army’s strategy.

“The pay is unfair. When it comes to fighting, we are the ones sent to the front lines first,” he told the BBC on condition of anonymity.

“They [the mercenaries] only come as back-up.”

He confirmed his pay was set at around $100 a month but was often delayed or unpaid altogether.

I was last in contact with him a week ago when he confirmed he was still stationed in Kibati, near Goma, where the army has a base.

“Things are very bad,” he said in a voice note to me.

I have not been able to get hold of him since – and the Kibati base has since been overrun by the M23 with many soldiers killed, including his commander.

Observers say the quick fall of Goma points to DR Congo’s fractured defence strategy, where overlapping forces and blurred lines of command have ultimately played into the hands of M23.

Richard Moncrief, International Crisis Group’s project director for the Great Lakes, points out that as well as mercenaries, the Congolese army works with troops from the Southern African Development Community (Sadc), a local militia known as Wazalendo, as well as soldiers from Burundi.

“It creates a situation where it’s impossible to plan military offences where chain of command and responsibility is muddied,” he told the BBC.

“I think that it’s important to work towards far greater coherence in the armed effort in North Kivu, probably involving a reduction in the number of armed groups or armed actors on the ground.”

For the ex-mercenary, the fate of his former Romanian colleagues has not come as a surprise.

“Poor command leads to failure,” he told the BBC.

Five years ago, on 31 January 2020, the UK left the European Union.

On that day, Great Britain severed the political ties it had held for 47 years, but stayed inside the EU single market and customs union for a further 11 months to keep trade flowing.

Northern Ireland had a separate arrangement.

Brexit was hugely divisive, both politically and socially, dominating political debate and with arguments about its impacts raging for years.

Five years on from the day Britain formally left the EU, BBC Verify has examined five important ways Brexit has affected Britain.

Economists and analysts generally assess the impact of leaving the EU single market and customs union on 1 Jan 2021 on the UK’s goods trade as having been negative.

This is despite the fact that the UK negotiated a free trade deal with the EU and avoided tariffs – or taxes – being imposed on the import and export of goods.

The negative impact comes from so-called “non-tariff barriers” – time consuming and sometimes complicated new paperwork that businesses have to fill out when importing and exporting to the EU.

There is some disagreement about how negative the specific Brexit impact has been.

Some recent studies suggest that UK goods exports are 30% lower than they would have been if we had not left the single market and customs union.

Some suggest only a 6% reduction.

We can’t be certain because the results depend heavily on the method chosen by researchers for measuring the “counterfactual”, i.e what would have happened to UK exports had the country stayed in the EU.

One thing we can be reasonably confident of is that small UK firms appear to be more adversely affected than larger ones.

They have been less able to cope with the new post-Brexit cross-border bureaucracy. That’s supported by surveys of small firms.

It’s also clear UK services exports – such as advertising and management consulting – have done unexpectedly well since 2021.

But the working assumption of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), the government’s independent official forecaster, is still that Brexit in the long-term will reduce exports and imports of goods and services by 15% relative to otherwise. It has held this view since 2016, including under the previous Government.

And the OBR’s other working assumption is that the fall in trade relative to otherwise will reduce the long-term size of the UK economy by around 4% relative to otherwise, equivalent to roughly £100bn in today’s money.

The OBR says it could revise both these assumptions based on new evidence and studies. The estimated negative economic impact could come down if the trade impact judged to be less severe. Yet there is no evidence, so far, to suggest that it will turn into a positive impact.

After Brexit, the UK has been able to strike its own trade deals with other countries.

There have been new trade deals with Australia and New Zealand and the government has been pursuing new agreements with the US and India.

But their impact on the economy is judged by the government’s own official impact assessments to be small relative to the negative impact on UK- EU trade.

However, some economists argue there could still be potential longer term economic benefits for the UK from not having to follow EU laws and regulations affecting sectors such as Artificial Intelligence.

Immigration was a key theme in the 2016 referendum campaign, centred on freedom of movement within the EU, under which UK and EU citizens could freely move to visit, study, work and live.

There has been a big fall in EU immigration and EU net migration (immigration minus emigration) since the referendum and this accelerated after 2020 due to the end of freedom of movement.

But there have been large increases in net migration from the rest of the world since 2020.

A post-Brexit immigration system came into force in January 2021.

Under this system, EU and non-EU citizens both need to get work visas in order to work in the UK (except Irish citizens, who can still live and work in the UK without a visa).

The two main drivers of the increase in non-EU immigration since 2020 are work visas (especially in health and care) and international students and their dependents.

UK universities started to recruit more non-EU overseas students as their financial situation deteriorated.

The re-introduction of the right of overseas students to stay and work in Britain after graduation by Boris Johnson’s government also made the UK more attractive to international students.

Subsequent Conservative governments reduced the rights of people on work and student visas to bring dependents and those restrictions have been retained by Labour.

Freedom of movement ended with Brexit, also affecting tourists and business travellers.

British passport holders can no longer use “EU/EEA/CH” lanes at EU border crossing points.

People can still visit the EU as a tourist for 90 days in any 180 day period without requiring a visa, provided they have at least three months remaining on their passports at the time of their return.

EU citizens can stay in the UK for up to six months without needing a visa.

However, a bigger change in terms of travel is on the horizon.

In 2025, the EU is planning to introduce a new electronic Entry Exit System (EES) – an automated IT system for registering travellers from non-EU countries.

This will register the person’s name, type of the travel document, biometric data (fingerprints and captured facial images) and the date and place of entry and exit.

It will replace the manual stamping of passports. The impact of this is unclear, but some in the travel sector have expressed fears it could potentially add to border queues as people leave the UK.

The EES was due to be introduced in November 2024 but was postponed until 2025, with no new date for implementation yet set.

And six months after the introduction of EES, the EU says it will introduce a new European Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS). UK citizens will have to obtain ETIAS clearance for travel to 30 European countries.

ETIAS clearance will cost €7 (£5.90) and be valid for up to three years or until someone’s passport expires, whichever comes first. If people get a new passport, they need to get a new ETIAS travel authorisation.

Meanwhile, the UK is introducing its equivalent to ETIAS for EU citizens from 2 April 2025 (though Irish citizens will be exempt). The UK permit – to be called an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) – will cost £16.

The money the UK sent to the EU was a controversial theme in the 2016 referendum, particularly the Leave campaign’s claim the UK sent £350m every week to Brussels.

The UK’s gross public sector contribution to the EU Budget in 2019-20, the final financial year before Brexit, was £18.3bn, equivalent to around £352m per week, according to the Treasury.

The UK continued paying into the EU Budget during the transition period but since 31 December 2020 it has not made these contributions.

However, those EU Budgets contributions were always partially recycled to the UK via payments to British farmers under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and “structural funding” – development grants to support skills, employment and training in certain economically disadvantaged regions of the nation. These added up to £5bn in 2019-20.

Since the end of the transition period UK governments have replaced the CAP payments directly with taxpayer funds.

Ministers have also replaced the EU structural funding grants, with the previous government rebranding them as “a UK Shared Prosperity” fund.

The UK was also receiving a negotiated “rebate” on its EU Budget contributions of around £4bn a year – money which never actually left the country,

So the net fiscal benefit to the UK from not paying into the EU Budget is closer to to £9bn per year, although this figure is inherently uncertain because we don’t know what the UK’s contribution to the EU Budget would otherwise have been.

The UK has also still been paying the EU as part of the official Brexit Withdrawal Agreement and its financial settlement. The Treasury says the UK paid a net amount of £14.9bn between 2021 and 2023, and estimated that from 2024 onwards it will have to pay another £6.4bn, although spread over many years.

Future payments under the withdrawal settlement are also uncertain in part because of fluctuating exchange rates.

However, there are other ways the UK’s finances remained connected with the EU, separate from the EU Budget and the Withdrawal Agreement.

After Brexit took effect, the UK also initially stopped paying into the Horizon scheme, which funds pan-European scientific research.

However, Britain rejoined Horizon in 2023 and is projected by the EU to pay in around €2.4bn (£2bn) per year on average to the EU budget for its participation, although historically the UK has been a net financial beneficiary from the scheme because of the large share of grants won by UK-based scientists.

There are, of course, a large number of other Brexit impacts which we have not covered here, ranging from territorial fishing rights, to farming, to defence. And with Labour looking for a re-set in EU relations, it’s a subject that promises to be a continuing source of debate and analysis for many years to come.

Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify the amount of time EU citizens can spend in the UK, visa free.

Recovery operations are still under way in Washington DC, after an American Airlines plane from Kansas carrying 64 people onboard collided with a military helicopter, manned by three personnel, on Wednesday night.

The victims include top figure skaters from the US and Russia, a young pilot, flight attendants, and a lawyer travelling home on her birthday.

Here are some of the people believed to have been on board the helicopter and the plane.

Jonathan J. Campos

The plane’s captain Jonathan J. Campos had dreamed of being a pilot since he was three, his aunt told the New York Times.

“I think he wanted to be free, and be able to fly and soar like a bird,” said Beverly Lane.

Mr Campos, 34, was raised in Brooklyn, New York, and had worked for PSA Airlines for eight years, she added.

Sam Lilley

The father of 28-year-old pilot Sam Lilley said that he was engaged to be married and “was just at the prime of his life”.

Tim Lilley told NewsNation that his son got his piloting license in only a few years because he “pursued it with a vigor”.

“Sam’s right with Jesus, and I know where he’s going,” he said.

His sister Tiffany Gibson called him “an amazing person”.

“He loved people. He loved adventure. He loved traveling,” she told ABC News.

“He was so young, and he was excited about life and his future and getting a dog and a house and kids. And it’s just, this is just tragic.”

Ian Epstein

Virginia resident Ian Epstein was a flight attendant on the plane, his family said, and was known for his ability to make people smile and was “full of life”.

“He loved being a flight attendant because he truly enjoyed traveling and meeting new people. But his true love was his family,” the statement continued.

Epstein, 53, was a father, stepfather, husband, and brother, the family said, adding that he will be “truly missed”.

Danasia Elder

Danasia Elder was also working as a flight attendant, her family have told US media in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Her brother-in-law Brandon Payne paid tribute to her, calling her “full of life”.

“She was a great wife, a great parent, a great friend,” Payne said. “She was very bright, very smart… This flight attendant thing was kind of like one of her dreams she wanted to do.”

He said that he is proud of his sister-in-law for pursuing her dreams, and said she “would want y’all do the same thing she did”.

“Chase your dreams, no matter what. Don’t let nothing scare you, push you away. Just believe in yourself, believe in God, and follow the path,”

Ryan O’Hara

Ryan O’Hara, 29, was the crew chief of the Black Hawk helicopter that collided with the passenger plane, according to CBS News.

He leaves behind a wife and one-year-old son, his local Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) program said in a social media post confirming his death.

O’Hara is “fondly remembered as a guy who would fix things around the ROTC gym as well as a vital member of the rifle team,” the post said.

Andrew Eaves

Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves confirmed that Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves was killed in the collision.

Paying tribute to her husband, Carrie Eaves confirmed he was one of the pilots of the Blackhawk helicopter.

“We ask that you pray for our family and friends and for all the other families that are suffering today. We ask for peace while we grieve,” she wrote on social media.

Spencer Lane and Christine Lane

Ice skater Spencer Lane, 16, died alongside his mother Christine Lane, 49, and were among at least 14 athletes and coaches who died while returning from a skate camp in Wichita.

His father told local media his son was “a force of nature” who showed “drive and tenacity” to the sport.

“He trained at the Skating Club of Boston five days a week and attended high school online and just committed himself to it,” Douglas Lane said.

He added that his wife was “a creative powerhouse” who would do anything for her children.

Jinna Han and Jin Han

Jinna Han, 13, had also travelled to the skate camp with her mother, Jin.

In a 2022 interview, Jinna told a news network in her Massachusetts hometown that she was excited to watch the Olympics.

“It’s just so exciting,” Jinna Han said. “It’s like, who’s going to win, what’s going to happen, because anything can happen at the Olympics.”

Doug Zeghibe of the Skating Club of Boston called Jin “wonderful, pleasant, polite” person.

“Never a discouraging word,” he said. “Always appreciative, always supportive of not just Jinna, her daughter, but every athlete. Just role model parents in your sport, and you don’t always get that.”

Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov

The deaths of beloved ice skating coaches Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who are Russian, were confirmed by the Kremlin.

Renowned skating coach and friend Rafael Arutyunyan told CNN that he had made his athletes train in silence after the crash as a mark of a respect.

“I know all these coaches,” he said. “All of our community was respectful to them and liked them, so I feel it’s they’ll stay with us forever.”

Olivia Ter

Twelve-year-old Olivia Ter from Maryland was among the US figure skaters aboard the flight, local officials confirmed.

“Olivia not only excelled in figure skating programs but inspired others through her talent, determination and sportsmanship,” Prince George’s County Parks and Recreation said in a statement reported by CBS News.

“The impact of Olivia’s life will continue to resonate in our youth sports community, and she will be sorely missed,” said Bill Tyler, the director of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission.

Cory Haynos, Roger Haynos and Stephanie Branton Haynos

Cory Haynos was travelling home from the US Ice Skating Championships with his parents, Roger Haynos and Stephanie Branton Haynos, a family member wrote on social media.

“Roger has always inspired me by his absolute love for his family and dedication to providing only the best for his wife and kids,” Matthew Alan LaRavier, Roger’s cousin, wrote.

“Cory was an amazing skater with a very bright future,” he said. “We all were expecting Cory to represent our country in the US Olympics in the future.”

Asra Hussain Raza

Indiana woman Asra Hussain Raza, 26, had moved to the Washington DC area after receiving a master’s degree in hospital management.

“She was returning from a work trip where she was helping to improve a hospital that really needed help,” said her husband Hamaad Raza, who showed the last text message from his wife to news crews outside the airport.

“And, you know, she was doing what she loved. She was even working on the flight.”

He added, “She gave a lot, but she had so much more to give. But if there was ever someone who took advantage of their 26 years of life, it was her.”

Michael Stovall

Michael Stovall’s mother said her son was “the happiest person” who saw the good in everybody.

Mr Stovall, known as Mikey, was travelling home from an annual hunting trip with friends, Christina Stovall told Wink News.

“Mikey did not have one enemy. If you see pictures of him… he was the life of the party. He loved everybody.”

Mr Stovall’s cousin told the New York Times that he had been flying with at least six of his friends from the trip, some of whom had known each other since childhood.

Jesse Pitcher

Travelling with Mr Stovall was Jesse Pitcher, his father confirmed.

The 30-year-old from Maryland had got married last year and recently started his own business, Jameson Pitcher told the New York Times.

“He was just getting started with life,” he said.

“He said he’d see me when he got back.”

Pergentino N. Malabed

Philippine police confirmed that one of its officers, Colonel Pergentino N. Malabed, had been on board the flight.

A body carrying Col Malabed’s passport was recovered from the Potomac, a police spokesman said.

He had travelled to the US with two other officers to test personnel vests the Phillippine police planned to buy, and was on his way to the Philippine embassy in Washington.

Casey Crafton

Tributes were made to “dedicated father” Casey Crafton of Salem, Connecticut.

“Salem has lost a dedicated father, husband, and community member,” Governor Ned Lamont wrote on social media.

Salem Little League, where Mr Crafton was a coach, said the town was “heartbroken” by the loss of the “beloved” club member.

“The Crafton family, deeply involved in all things Salem, has suffered an unimaginable loss,” the statement read.

Sarah Lee Best

Two DC lawyers were also on board the flight, their loved ones confirmed.

Sarah Lee Best, 33, was kind and hard working, her husband Daniel Solomon told the Washington Post.

Mrs Best and Mr Solomon had planned to travel to Hawaii, where she was born, for their 10th wedding anniversary in May.

Elizabeth Keys

Lawyer Elizabeth Keys, 33, “always, always managed to have fun… no matter what she was doing,” her partner David Seidman told the paper.

She died on her birthday, Mr Seidman said.

The firm where both worked, Wilkinson Stekloff, paid tribute to the “cherished members” of its team.

They were “wonderful attorneys, colleagues, and friends,” firm founder Beth Wilkinson said in a statement.

Professor Kiah Duggins

The president of Howard University confirmed Professor Kiah Duggins had died in the collision.

The civil rights lawyer was set to begin teaching at the university’s School of Law in the autumn.

“She dedicated her career to fighting against unconstitutional policing and unjust money bail practices in Tennessee, Texas and Washington DC,” the university said in a statement reported by US media.

The rebel leader whose fighters have captured Goma, the biggest city in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, has vowed to continue their offensive all the way to the capital, Kinshasa.

Corneille Nangaa, who heads an alliance of rebel groups that includes the M23, said their ultimate aim was to topple President Félix Tshisekedi’s government.

Unconfirmed reports say the Rwanda-backed rebels are currently advancing towards Bukavu, the second-biggest city in the mineral-rich east, despite international calls for a ceasefire.

In a televised address after the fall of Goma, Tshisekedi said a “vigorous and coordinated response” was under way to recapture territory from the rebels.

“Be sure of one thing: the Democratic Republic of Congo will not let itself be humiliated or crushed. We will fight and we will triumph,” he said on Wednesday evening.

The fighting has forced about 500,000 people from their homes, worsening an already dire humanitarian crisis, according to the UN.

On Thursday, Nangaa presented the rebels as the new administrators of Goma, telling journalists they were there to stay and would get services up and running again.

Since fighting escalated last week, electricity and water supplies in the city have been cut off, and food is scarce.

“We will continue the march of liberation all the way to Kinshasa,” Nangaa added.

Analysts say such an offensive would be unlikely given the vast size of the country – Kinshasa is 2,600km (1,600 miles) away. However, it did happen in 1997, when Rwanda-backed forces ousted long-time leader Mobutu Sese Seko.

Nangaa’s comments will increase anger in Kinshasa, which has accused neighbouring Rwanda of backing the rebels, and even having its troops in Goma.

Rwanda is also facing a chorus of international criticism, despite its denials of direct military support.

M23 – the main rebel group in the alliance – is led by ethnic Tutsis, and says it took up arms to protect the rights of the minority group in DR Congo.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame is also a Tutsi, and accuses DR Congo’s government of harbouring Hutu militias who were involved in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Both the UN and the southern African regional bloc Sadc have peacekeepers in the east, but they failed to halt the rebel assault.

Peacekeepers from several counties have been killed in the conflict, with South African troops suffering the highest casualties – 13.

On Wednesday, Kagame said Rwanda was ready for a confrontation with South Africa if necessary, following a claim by President Cyril Ramaphosa that M23 fighters and Rwandan forces were responsible for the deaths.

In a strongly worded statement on X, Kagame accused Ramaphosa of distorting their private conversations.

“If South Africa wants to contribute to peaceful solutions, that is well and good, but South Africa is in no position to take on the role of a peacemaker or mediator. And if South Africa prefers confrontation, Rwanda will deal with the matter in that context any day,” he said.

The exchange marks a significant escalation in tensions between the two nations, whose relationship has been fragile for several years.

Southern African leaders are due to hold a summit on Friday, with Kagame saying their regional force was “not a peacekeeping force, and it has no place in this situation”.

In contrast, Tshisekedi paid tribute to the killed Sadc soldiers “fighting alongside us”, as well as UN peacekeepers.

The UN, the European Union and countries including the US and China have all called on Rwandan forces to leave DR Congo.

The UK and Germany are among donor countries that have threatened to withdraw their aid to Rwanda in the wake of the M23 offensive.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy said on Wednesday that £32m ($40m) of annual bilateral aid was under threat, while Germany has cancelled aid talks with the country.

Additional reporting by Nomsa Maseko in Johannesburg

The aviation world is struggling to understand how a deadly mid-air collision between a passenger plane and military helicopter was able to happen in what one expert described as “the most controlled bit of airspace in the world”.

A US Army Black Hawk helicopter with a crew of three collided with an American Airlines jet carrying 64 people seconds before the passenger aircraft was due to land at Washington National airport.

Both aircraft were sent careering into the icy Potomac River on Wednesday night.

The exact cause of the crash remains unknown.

Officials will release a preliminary report within 30 days, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) – which is leading the investigation.

Crews were able to recover flight data recorders – known as the black boxes – from the wreckage on Thursday, according to the BBC’s US news partner CBS. The devices can help investigators pinpoint what led up to a crash.

Airspace over the District of Columbia is heavily restricted to protect both national security and the buildings that house core aspects of US government.

Commercial planes are prevented from flying over the Pentagon, the White House and other historic landmarks.

Yet the area sees a lot of air traffic, Aviation attorney Jim Brachle, who has handled numerous litigation matters related to jets and Reagan airport, told the BBC.

There is commercial traffic but also private aviation and helicopters that fly around the city, often carrying high-ranking officials and politicians between sensitive locations.

“You got these really narrow pathways in and out and you’ve got a lot of congestion and extra airplanes, so you’re putting a lot of aircraft in a really confined space,” he said.

Jeff Guzzetti, a former aircraft accident investigator for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the NTSB, told BBC Newshour that it seems the helicopter was in communication with the control tower before the accident. The air traffic controller pointed out the American Airlines flight to the helicopter, he said.

“The helicopter pilot indicated he had the airplane in sight and was going to visually separate from it – and then the accident happened shortly thereafter – so there’s going to be a lot of questions about exactly what did the helicopter pilot see?” Mr Guzzetti said.

Todd Inman, part of the five-member NTSB board, said that DC is also a “unique environment” because of helicopters and specific zones they’re allowed to fly.

“If you look at DC, you see a lot of helicopters going down into this area so there’s a very well-defined system in that regard,” he said.

Mr Inman could not provide any specifics on altitude of the helicopter before it collided with the American Airlines flight.

Mr Brachle, who has handled numerous litigation matters related to jets and Reagan airport, told the BBC the question that remains is how two aircraft ended up in the same airspace.

“What’s really unique about Reagan is right there on the river. There’s also a helicopter route that crosses right through that final approach and that’s at or below 200 feet,” he said.

Brachle said the routes for both helicopters and the approach for aircraft intersect.

“You’re putting potentially two different aircraft in a really small space with hardly any separation,” he said. “If you get one that’s maybe a little too low, one that’s a little too high, you end up being in the same spot.”

Aviation consultant Philip Butterworth-Hayes said the incident occurred at the “nexus of different aviation systems”, including civilian and military systems, as well as procedures specific to the airport.

“You are at the border of three or four aviation systems here – and it’s at those borders where most accidents tend to happen,” he added.

But UK-based aviation expert John Strickland said the amount of commercial air traffic in the area cannot fully explain why the deadly collision was able to happen.

As well as Washington National close to the city centre, he notes, there is the international gateway, Washington Dulles, and also Baltimore Airport a little further away.

“There has to be management of traffic flows to keep separation. It’s much like we have in London where you have to manage traffic flows between Heathrow, Stansted, Gatwick and London City.

“So DC is not different in that sense to London or New York… it’s not totally unusual.”

Mr Butterworth-Hayes continued: “This is the most controlled bit of airspace in the world. You have both US government and civilian systems – Ronald Reagan airport is even owned by the government, it’s one of the very, very few like that.

“This really is the most secure – and should be the safest – airspace in the world, given the number of security and civilian safety organisations working in that area.”

The last fatal crash involving a commercial plane in the US was in February 2009. Officials and experts alike have stressed that this type of incident is incredibly rare due to tight safety restrictions on all types of flights.

Footage obtained from an air traffic control source by CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, showed the two aircraft which appear to have been involved in the crash clearly visible on radar systems accessible to controllers.

Audio sourced by BBC News appears to confirm the helicopter was in contact with air traffic control on the ground at the airport.

The helicopter was asked if it had the passenger plane “in sight” and to “pass behind” it. In the audio that follows, controllers appear to realise there has been a collision and can be heard directing other planes in the air to neighbouring airports.

Mr Butterworth-Hayes said an in-air collision like this requires a number of things going wrong.

He said that in order to fly in civilian airspace, the military helicopter would have needed to be fitted with a transponder alerting surrounding aircraft to its position.

That means both aircraft should have been able to see each other, he says, plus there would have been instructions from air traffic control and an aircraft protection safety device that operate separately from each other.

“On this occasion, you have these two different systems and both should have been able to keep these aircraft separate.”

The Black Hawk helicopter was part of B Company, 12th Aviation Battalion. It left Fort Belvoir, a military base in Virginia, and was taking part in a training exercise.

US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth has said the helicopter’s crew were “fairly experienced” and taking part in an annual night flight training session.

Speaking to CNN, Cedric Leighton – a retired US Air Force colonel – said it was normal for that type of military aircraft to be training at night in the area, particularly to make sure pilots are proficient with using instruments needed to fly in the dark.

He said one of the unit’s duties is to transport high-ranking personnel around the capital – though none were on board at the time of the crash as it was a training flight.

The unit’s pilots are expected to be proficient at flying in DC’s busy airspace and “train in order to avoid incidents like this”, he added.

Mr Butterworth-Hayes said only experienced pilots would be able to train in such a busy section of airspace.

“Whether it’s training for new systems or equipment, we need to know what systems the pilot had turned on in the helicopter and whether they had all the safety systems on board, or whether they were trying a new procedure or new route.”

South Africa and Rwanda’s already fraught diplomatic relations have worsened after President Cyril Ramaphosa accused the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel group of killing South African peacekeepers in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

As the rebels gained the upper hand in the battlefield by capturing most of Goma – the biggest city in the east – South Africa fired a diplomatic salvo, warning that further attacks on its troops would be considered a “declaration of war”.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame hit back, accusing South Africa of being part of a “belligerent force” involved in “offensive combat operations” to help the Congolese government “fight against its own people”.

A total of 13 South African soldiers have been killed in the fighting since last week as the rebels made a lightning advance towards Goma – a major trading hub on the border with Rwanda.

Last year, another seven South Africans were killed in eastern DR Congo – making it one of the country’s deadliest combat-related tragedies in recent times.

South Africa and Rwanda have long had a difficult relationship.

In 2014, South Africa expelled three Rwandan diplomats after an attack on the home of an exiled Rwandan dissident in Johannesburg.

Kagame’s government responded by expelling six South African envoys.

Tensions seemingly eased after Ramaphosa’s visit to Rwanda last year for commemorations to mark the 30th anniversary of the genocide in which about 800,000 people were killed.

But they have flared up again, following the death of the South Africans who were deployed to eastern DR Congo in December 2023 as part of a regional peace-keeping force sent by the Southern African Development Community (Sadc)

South African soldiers make up the bulk of the force – known by the acronym SAMIDRC – that had the mission of repelling armed groups such as the M23 and bringing peace to the mineral-rich region following decades of unrest.

The latest diplomatic fall-out started with a post shared on Ramaphosa’s X page.

In it, the president confirmed he had spoken to Kagame about the escalating conflict and that both leaders had agreed “on the urgent need for a ceasefire and the resumption of peace talks by all parties to the conflict”.

Ramaphosa also insisted, in a later statement, that the presence of South African troops in DR Congo was not a “declaration of war against any country or state” – an apparent reference to Rwanda.

South Africa’s Defence Minister Angie Motshekga, however, had a slightly different take, telling reporters: “There’s been no hostilities between us, it’s just that when they were firing above our heads, the president did warn them [that] if you’re going to fire, we’re going to take that as a declaration of war.”

But Ramaphosa went further on X, saying the peacekeepers were killed in attacks by the M23 and – he pointedly added – “Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) militia”.

This angered Kagame, who said statements made by South African officials – including Ramaphosa – contained lies and distortion.

“The Rwanda Defence Force is an army, not a militia,” Kagame replied on X.

“President Ramaphosa has never given a ‘warning’ of any kind, unless it was delivered in his local language which I do not understand. He did ask for support to ensure the South African force has adequate electricity, food and water, which we shall help communicate.

“President Ramaphosa confirmed to me that M23 did not kill the soldiers from South Africa, [the Conglese army] FARDC did,” Kagame said.

He added that the regional peacekeepers – who included troops from Tanzania and Malawi – were a “belligerent force” working alongside “genocidal armed groups” that targeted Rwanda, and had “no place in this situation”.

Kagame closed his lengthy statement by saying South Africa was in “no position to take on the role of a peacemaker or mediator” and if the country wanted a confrontation, Rwanda would “deal with the matter in that context any day”.

Kagame’s comments clearly suggested that he wants South Africa to back off from DR Congo, where its military involvement dates back to the late 1990s.

It first joined the UN’s peacekeeping mission, Monusco, following the end of the racist system of apartheid in 1994.

At the time, the South Africa’s military had just emerged from being regarded as a “highly effective apartheid war-time force” to a “peacetime force” left to grapple with reduced funding and a “lack of political direction”, Thomas Mandrup, an associate professor at the country’s Stellenbosch University, told the BBC.

While South Africa has said its involvement in DR Congo was guided by its need to “contribute to the stability” of a fellow Sadc member, defence analyst Dean Wingrin said the country’s economic interests also influenced its decision.

“The DRC is a very big trading partner with [us] because eastern DRC is so rich in minerals. We import a lot of minerals… from the DRC so South Africa has an interest in a peaceful DRC,” he told the BBC.

While Monusco’s mission has largely been about peacekeeping, escalating tensions in the region led to the establishment of the Force Intervention Brigade in 2013 to “actively engage” with the numerous armed groups in eastern DR Congo.

This intervention had initial success in repelling the M23, the most prominent rebel group.

This was partly due to the deployment of South Africa’s attack aircraft – Rooivalk – which had a “devastating effect” on the M23 in a short space of time, according to Mr Wingrin.

The rebel group then effectively melted away and was subsequently expelled from eastern DR Congo – until its recent comeback which has seen it capture much of the region.

However, South Africa’s military has been in no position, this time around, to thwart the rebel group’s advance as it has lost its airpower.

“Unfortunately South Africa’s budget has continued to decline over the years. The air force couldn’t afford to maintain the Rooivalks,” Mr Wingrin said.

“We’re missing that vital aircover that would’ve come in so handy a few days ago but is way too late now,” he said.

Mr Mandrup expressed a similar view, saying South Africa deployed its troops in 2023, ignoring warnings that “you haven’t got the capabilities needed, the defence force is in shambles and you’re facing an opponent that’s much better equipped than in 2013”.

He added that it was difficult for South Africa to bring back its troops at this point because the “forces are locked down and caught in two bases”.

“They can’t get out, get aircover [or] reinforcements. They can’t even get the wounded out,” he said.

Ramaphosa seemed to agree, saying in a recent statement that the situation in the region was “tense, volatile and unpredictable”.

In spite of this, any decision to pull South African troops out of DR Congo ultimately lies with Sadc since SAMIDRC was deployed by the 16-member regional bloc.

There are reports that Sadc is set to take this decision at a summit taking place on Friday.

For Mr Wingrin, there was a need for the South African government to do “serious introspection” over its military involvement in DR Congo.

“Is it something they want to push at all costs and what is it worth to South Africa to have sons and daughters dying so far away?” he asked.

So, South Africa’s president appears to have a difficult choice – keep his soldiers in DR Congo and risk further deaths, or the embarrassment of pulling them out, presumably after negotiating safe passage for them with Rwanda.

Singer and actress Marianne Faithfull has died at the age of 78, her spokesperson has said.

Born in Hampstead in December 1946, she was known for hits like As Tears Go By, which reached the UK top 10 in 1964, and for starring roles in films including 1968’s The Girl On A Motorcycle.

She was also famously the girlfriend of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger in the 1960s, inspiring songs such as Wild Horses and You Can’t Always Get What You Want. After a period of heroin addiction in the 70s, she resurrected her career with the classic album Broken English.

Paying tribute, Jagger described Faithfull as “a wonderful friend, a beautiful singer and a great actress,” saying he was “so saddened”.

His bandmate Keith Richards posted that he was “so sad” following Faithfull’s death, adding that he “will miss her”.

Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood posted twice on Instagram. One an old picture of him, Faithfull and Richards in a recording studio with the caption “Farewell dear Marianne”, and a more recent shot of the pair with the words “Marianne will be dearly missed. Bless her xx”.

“Marianne passed away peacefully in London today, in the company of her loving family,” a statement from her spokesperson said.

“She will be dearly missed.”

The singer had previously suffered multiple health problems, including bulimia, breast cancer and emphysema caused by decades of smoking.

In 2020, she contracted Covid-19 and was hospitalised for 22 days.

Doctors said they did not expect her to survive – but she pulled through, releasing her 21st album, She Walks in Beauty, a year later.

Her story is a remarkable portrait of the rock and roll era.

She was a doe-eyed poster girl of the 1960s, plucked from obscurity by the Rolling Stones’ manager at the age of 16 and given As Tears Go By, the first song ever written by Jagger and Keith Richards.

An international hit, her version was light and breathy, delivered in a folk-pop style that was to become her trademark during the swinging 60s.

With her eponymous debut album and 1966’s North Country Maid, she became part of the “British Invasion” of the US pop charts.

Meanwhile, her affair with Jagger turned her into a tabloid lightning rod. After they split she fell into drug addiction – at one point living homeless on the streets of Soho.

She re-emerged tentatively with the 1976 album Dreamin’ My Dreams but really hit her stride with 1979’s New Wave-influenced Broken English, on which she showcased the ashen voice and hard-won wisdom that would define the second act of her career. The album was nominated for a Grammy Award.

In recent years, she teamed up with songwriters like PJ Harvey and Nick Cave, who each cited her as an inspiration.

Other collaborators over the years included David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn, Emmylou Harris and Metallica, whose drummer Lars Ulrich thanked Faithfull for her “incredible and unique contribution to our music, and for always being so willing to join us in performing it”.

Her acting career ran in parallel to music. On stage, she appeared alongside Glenda Jackson in Chekhov’s Three Sisters; and played Ophelia in Hamlet – later admitting her nightly descent into madness had been chemically enhanced.

She also played God in two episodes of the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, and the devil in William Burroughs’ and Tom Waits’ musical, The Black Rider.

But music was where her heart lay. Her penultimate album, 2018’s Negative Capabilty, was a meditation on ageing, loneliness and grief – inspired partly by the death of her old friend, and fellow Rolling Stones’ paramour Anita Pallenberg; and partly by the terror attacks on the Bataclan nightclub in her adopted home of Paris.

Taking her full circle, the album included a raw and emotional re-recording of As Tears Go By that reduced everyone in the studio to tears, according to producer Rob Ellis.

Faithfull received the World Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Women’s World Awards, and was made a commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France.

Faithfull’s long-time friend, the BBC Radio 2 presenter Bob Harris, called her an “encapsulation of the sixties”.

He said while she initially was known for being Mick Jagger’s girlfriend, through her “people began to see her as an artist, as a creator”.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s The World Tonight, Harris added: “To me, she was wonderful, she was interesting, very, very bright, and from an aristocratic background, which was always part of the way she carried herself.”

The singer married and divorced three times – to artist John Dunbar in 1965, Ben Brierly of punk band the Vibrators in 1979, and actor Giorgio Della Terza in 1988.

She is survived by her son, Nicholas Dunbar.

Pop star Rihanna was in a Los Angeles courtroom on Wednesday as her partner, rapper A$AP Rocky, continued his trial on assault charges.

The singer, who shares two children with the rapper, sat in the court with A$AP Rocky’s family as the trial delved into allegations that he pulled a gun out on his former friend and opened fire multiple times.

The trial started on Friday and will determine whether the rapper will face penalties on two charges of felony assault. He could face decades in prison.

A$AP Rocky has pleaded not guilty to the charges and his lawyers have argued the weapon was a prop gun and his former friend is only after money.

Here’s what you need to know about the case.

A$AP Rocky’s assault trial began on 24 January in Los Angeles.

The rapper, whose real name is Rakim Mayers, was charged with two felony assault charges relating to a 2021 shooting incident in Hollywood.

Authorities allege A$AP Rocky and a former friend got into a heated discussion that turned violent and led to the rapper pulling out a gun and opening fire.

The victim in the case is fellow artist and childhood friend Terell Ephron, also known as A$AP Relli. He is the star witness for prosecutors

They were both part of the A$AP Mob hip-hop collective and have known one another since their time together at a New York high school.

Their relationship eroded over time as A$AP Rocky’s career took off and he became famous.

It all led up to a disagreement between the pair in November 2021.

Mr Ephron took the stand this week to describe their relationship and the moments of the alleged shooting.

Authorities have said Mr Ephron met Mr Mayers on 6 November in 2021, a day after the pair got into a disagreement.

They met outside a Hollywood hotel about a block from the iconic Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Prosecutors say when the pair met things got physical. Mr Mayers is then alleged to have whipped out a gun from his waistband and pointed it toward Mr Ephron, telling him “I’ll kill you right now”.

Court documents outline that Mr Ephron told the rapper to fire the weapon, which Mr Mayers did not and instead started walking away.

Mr Ephron followed behind and yelled at Mr Mayers about their disagreements, court documents show.

That’s when prosecutors allege Mr Mayers pulled out the gun again and opened fire.

Court documents allege multiple bullets were fired, one of which is alleged to have grazed Mr Ephron’s knuckles.

Authorities say parts of the incident were captured on surveillance footage, including some footage that included audio of gunfire, although there is no video showing the shooting.

Some of this footage has been played in court already for jurors.

There are several key points of contention in the case: the weapon, police investigation and Mr Ephron’s injuries.

The rapper’s lawyers have noted the weapon authorities say was the gun he pulled out was not usable – instead it was a prop weapon his security encouraged him to carry to ward off would-be attackers.

His lawyers have also focused on Mr Ephron taking multiple days to report the incident to police, and how authorities found no trace of bullet casings or a shooting when they responded to the incident.

Court documents detail that Mr Ephron returned to the scene later and gathered two shell casings he said he found in the area. He brought them when he reported the incident to police two days later.

He also did not immediately go to hospital after the incident and instead sought medical treatment after flying back to New York.

Yes, the rapper could face up to 24 years in prison if found guilty in the trial, which is expected to go on for about three weeks.

A panel of 12 jurors will decide his fate.

It’s unclear if Rihanna will continue appearing for the trial. Before the proceedings started, the rapper’s lawyer had told the court this week that Mr Mayers has tried to keep his family away from all of this.

Media reports indicate that on Wednesday she sat between the rapper’s mother and sister in the courtroom. The couple’s two children did not appear.

Rihanna’s presence sparked intense media and fan interest outside the courthouse, but she entered through a non-public entrance used by judges, and was already seated in the courtroom when media were allowed into the chamber.

During jury selection, prosecutors questioned jurors about Rihanna and whether her connection to the case would affect their ability to deliver a fair verdict. While some described themselves as Rihanna fans, and many more had heard of Rihanna than A$AP Rocky, jurors said her presence in the courtroom would not influence their decision making.

Rihanna’s presence did attract attention from jurors in a murder trial across the hall at the courthouse, with some commenting on her being so nearby.

Rocky’s trial is being televised, but Rihanna sat out of view of the cameras in the courtroom.

It was early Saturday, when hundreds of staff who operate a sprawling humanitarian operation at the Al-Hol displacement camp in northeast Syria were given a clear message: “Stop work.”

The despatch was as abrupt as it was distressing for those who knew the daily work of stabilising the site, which holds 40,000 people, mostly women and children, displaced from areas previously controlled by the Islamic State group.

Water, sanitation and security were all upended at the huge camp, said a senior humanitarian worker familiar with its operation. Another facility in Syria’s north-east, Al Roj, was also hit by the sudden order. IS suspects are held near both sites.

“All of a sudden, you [risked] real instability and violence rising, as well as, obviously, former ISIS on the street,” said Susan Reichle, a retired USAID Foreign Service officer.

The dramatic stop-work order came after President Trump froze all foreign assistance provided by the United States, by far the world’s biggest aid donor, on his first day back in office, calling for a review to ensure it abided by his “America First” foreign policy.

For days, aid officials and global charities had waited to understand the implications of that order. On Friday night, its scale became clear.

A leaked memo revealed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was placing a 90-day halt on all existing foreign assistance – with the only exceptions for emergency food aid, and for military funding for Israel and Egypt.

As news of the freeze filtered through the ranks of the international aid community, stop-work notices began to arrive.

Programmes ranging from water sanitation projects to vaccination initiatives were thrown into chaos as contractors tried to understand the implications of the directive. BRAC, the world’s largest non-profit, told the BBC that 3.5 million people would be affected by programmes it had suspended in four countries.

It felt “like an earthquake across the aid sector, with life-saving programmes in ruins”, one veteran international aid worker told the BBC.

Those who support the freeze of US aid programmes, worth around $70bn per year, say they are vastly bloated, with Washington carrying too much of the weight compared to other Western nations. And they argue the government sends far too much money abroad that would be better spent on Americans at home.

The administration has made clear that it specifically opposes any projects supporting diversity and inclusion, transgender rights, family planning, abortion access and other issues – some of which have been long-targeted by Republican administrations. The freeze, they say, is designed to create an opportunity to root out wasteful spending.

“Every dollar we spend, every program we fund, and every policy we pursue must be justified with the answer to three simple questions,” Mr Rubio has said. “Does it make America safer? Does it make America stronger? Does it make America more prosperous?”

The programmes affected, however, have been vast, triggering widespread shock and criticism in many parts of a global system intertwined with US funding. Aid contractors fearful of losing further funding have mostly been voicing these concerns privately, though some have spoken out.

On Monday evening, staff who work on the US programme countering the global spread of HIV could no longer log into their computer systems, according to Dr. Atul Gawande, former Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID, and an expert on the project.

Then-President Bush launched the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (Pepfar) in 2003. It now employs more than 250,000 doctors, nurses and other staff across 55 countries distributing anti-viral medication and doing critical preventative work. It is credited with saving millions of lives and suppressing the spread of HIV and Aids.

“The program is shuttered…. Services are shut,” Dr Gawande told the BBC on Tuesday, saying clinics that served 20 million people with HIV were affected.

Paul Jordan, who works at the European Institute of Peace on repatriating foreign citizens from Al-Hol and Al-Roj, said much of his work funded by Washington had stopped immediately.

“In terms of immediate impact I’ve never seen anything as significant as this before,” he told a UK parliamentary committee on Tuesday, adding the camps were set to be “in limbo” for months while the review was carried out.

“What that led to was in the last few days basically nothing being delivered within the camps,” he said. “There was no camp administration, very little security, food wasn’t delivered.”

Later on Tuesday, as aid organisations clamoured for exemptions from the US government to continue programmes, the first signs emerged that the State Department was trying to limit the impact of its sweeping freeze.

The definition of “life-saving humanitarian assistance” allowed to continue was broadened beyond emergency food aid to include “core life-saving medicine”, medical services, food, shelter and other provisions.

That guidance has reportedly seen Pepfar programmes restart, but whether preventative drugs – rather than just HIV treatments – are covered remains unclear.

Dr Gawande, who was appointed to a senior role in USAID under the Biden administration, said other programmes remained up in the air – including work combatting an Mpox outbreak in West Africa, bird flu monitoring across dozens of countries and initiatives targeting fentanyl trafficking.

“It was immediate and my immediate reaction was, this is catastrophic,” he said of the effects of the freeze.

Asked about those specific programmes,, a State Department spokesperson said: “We are judiciously reviewing all the waivers submitted. The Secretary of State has the ultimate responsibility…to protect America’s investments.”

Blumont, the US contractor that coordinates aid work at Al-Hol and Al-Roj, said it received a waiver from the State Department late Monday allowing it to continue “critical activities” at the camps for two more weeks. However, it has no certainty beyond that time.

Asked by the BBC about the situation at the Syria camps and other projects, the State Department said “critical national security waivers have been granted,” but didn’t specify whether any related to Syria.

The new State Department guidance also said: “This waiver does not apply to activities that involve abortions, family planning conferences, administrative costs… gender or DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) ideology programs, transgender surgeries, or other non-life saving assistance.”

Back in Washington, USAID headquarters have been roiled by the aid freeze.

Staff had been warned not to try and circumvent the directives and given strict orders not to communicate about the freeze outside the agency. An internal memo sternly warned that any breach would “result in disciplinary action”.

Unnamed staff have since been accused of trying to “circumvent” the president’s executive order and dozens of senior officials have been placed on administrative leave.

In the halls of the agency, picture frames that once displayed images of on-the-ground projects are now empty.

The world of US foreign assistance had been upended in a matter of days, said Dr Joia Mukherjee, an infectious diseases doctor from Harvard Medical School and the charity Partners In Health who helped advise on the creation of Pepfar.

“It’s taking 20 years of goodwill and turning it into an instrument of terror, when people feel like if they touch the drugs, if they see a patient, they might get fired,” she said.

As criticism mounted, on Wednesday, the State Department said the 90-day pause and review of foreign aid was “already paying dividends” to the US and its people.

“We are rooting out waste. We are blocking woke programs. And we are exposing activities that run contrary to our national interests. None of this would be possible if these programs remained on autopilot,” it said.

Explaining why it was necessary to order a temporary suspension for all projects, rather than a more targeted approach, the State Department said: “It is impossible to evaluate programs on autopilot because the participants – both inside and outside of government – have little to no incentive to share programmatic-level details so long as the dollars continue to flow.”

It added: “A temporary pause, with commonsense waivers for truly life-threatening situations, is the only way to scrutinize and prevent waste.”

Thousands of kilometres away, in the Ugandan town of Masindi, Teddy Ruge is still grappling with the fall-out. He was told to “stop work” on Monday night, and the waivers given so far don’t seem to allow him to restart his US government-funded farming project.

Mr Ruge employs small-plot farmers who grow a nutrient rich leaf called Moringa. The plant is sold to North America and Europe where it is used to fortify bread and other foods.

His farmers rely on a wage of around $70 per month, their incomes bolsted by a yearly grant of around $250,000 from USAID.

But that lifeline appeared to fall away, exactly a week after Mr Trump’s executive order.

“We were actually preparing to have a meeting with all the farmers to talk about the new season and what to plant – a planning meeting,” Mr Ruge told the BBC. “But now it’s more of a funeral,”

He still doesn’t know whether he is allowed to continue employing the farmers or if they can show up to work.

“From what I’m reading, our program is at jeopardy of being permanently canceled because it’s at the edge of climate resilience and green manufacturing – which are not exactly at the top of the list of Trump’s priorities,” said Mr Ruge.

“It’s really disheartening. So I have a few sleepless nights ahead of me.”

Five skiers were killed in two separate avalanches in the French Alps on Wednesday, local officials have confirmed.

One torrent of snow came in Val-Cenis, in the south-eastern Savoie region, killing four Norwegian skiers, while a Swiss skier died further north in the Haute-Savoie region, near Chamonix.

Three of the Norwegians were killed instantly while a fourth, a woman, died in a nearby hospital after suffering severe hypothermia and a cardiorespiratory arrest.

They were part of a larger group of seven skiers and the remaining three were unharmed.

Jacques Arnoux, mayor of Val-Cenis, told AFP each member of the group had been carrying an avalanche beacon as they were off-piste skiing.

Also known as backcountry skiing, it refers to any area not marked or maintained for use by skiers and is considerably more dangerous.

“It was an avalanche of great size which was triggered outside the ski area,” Mayor Arnoux added.

A team of 10 mountain rescue specialists were despatched in the operation, a police source said.

The Swiss victim, a 30-year-old woman, was skiing with her brother, who was taken to hospital for tests, and her father, who was unharmed.

All three had anti-avalanche airbags and were skiing off-piste in the Mont Blanc massif mountain range.

On Tuesday, a 55-year-old Brazilian-Portuguese skier was killed in a “very large” avalanche on an off-piste section Mont Blanc.